Today we have an author, poet, gardener, and animal rights advocate named Lenore Plassman. Her specialty is short stories and she writes poetry prolifically. It’s a pleasure to have her on Friday Feature!
What is your favorite kind of book to read?
All types but there must be elements of poetry and brain marbles rolling to keep my attention. There must be scads of careful detail and delight in the literary landscape.
What is your favorite genre to write?
My favorite genre- to write? Poetry creeps into everything I scribble so I’m going with poetry.
What makes you feel most creative?
Exact here: what makes me feel most creative? Trees and waterscapes; creeks and rivers and inlets and islands. And characters, human or otherwise; rocks and nature and trails that test my strength and of course botanicals of all sorts.
What is your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenges are my wide feet and my inability to not be clumsy when dancing. Please do not ask me to sing.
When you were young, when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
When I was young did I know I wanted to be a writer? No. A teacher suggested I could write as well as read so I did then from there the people around me watched me write but never nudged me in any direction or form. I just did so I was. A writer.
Do you have any advice for a person who wants to be a writer?
Advice for someone wanting to be a writer? Quit wishing. Get out and examine what is you. What interests you. How exactly is that interest uniquely you- I do not want to read your work on green grass. I want to read your work on how one day your Grandma twisted plaits of grass in your hair and from then on grass meant Grandma and summer. I want to read that.
Were any books or authors particularly influential to you?
Folks who influenced me: in particular. Walt Whitman. Hemingway. Faulkner. To some extent, Emily Dickinson.
What are you working on now?
I’m in a lull. I write poetry as it flies in; recording what is around me. I’m also working on interviewing community members and garnering articles from them. I have never thought of myself as a journalist so this is a literary dance that stretches my horizons. I’m enjoying the experience though I also have stage fright about it.
If you could do anything special with your writing, what would it be?
I’d like to watch a person who never thought they could ever carve out a literary gem, do that. I’d like to see that person laugh when their loved one came back to them, delighted at their effort. I’d like to witness that gotcha moment. That would be nice.
Here’s a little more info about her:
Lenore’s poetry and short stories derive mostly from her love of nature and the things living in it, as well as the colorful characters she has known as child and adult.
Lenore became serious about writing at about age 8, with the encouragement of a special teacher. This led her eventually to study English at the University of Washington.
Her experience caring for animals in a veterinary clinic, living in farming country, and working in elder care adds richness and interest to her narratives.
Lenore’s creative imagination takes form in her three acre which she calls her Private World. Here, numerous pocket gardens, a cow stanchion (last remnant of her family’s farm), a hillside fountain, and other colorful surprises sharing space with chickens, dogs, cats, and a burro. A painting of Gandalf guards one shed-side, Smaug the other.
A respite is found here, for friends and visitors, from city humdrumness. Several times a year Lenore journeys to Western Washington to hike in the Cascades, study and participate in writing workshops. All of the photography shown in these pages are places she has walked and from which she continues to learn.
In Lenore’s words:
“I generally allow my work to stand up and speak for itself. Currently I am stationed in the arid side of Washington state. I am a co-CEO of a small holding. I care for various birds, a burro, gardens. My husband and I take prybars to rocks in the garden and hope for rain. And sometimes poetry worms its way out of those rocks and sagebrush. Imagery never leaves my side. Bast, the cat Goddess, reigns, clawing poetic snippets out when I’d rather She left me alone.”
Her thoughts and writings can be found here:
Her books can be found here:
Check out her most recent poetry chapbook!
Mindflight 